


midnight solace

by discreet_insanity



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Family Fluff, PTSD, nara family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 03:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18274871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discreet_insanity/pseuds/discreet_insanity
Summary: Children climb into their parents beds, not the other way around.In which Shikadai and Shikamaru both do their best to heal something they can't see is broken.





	midnight solace

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a five paragraph blurb of an idea on a scrap piece of paper that I wanted to save on my computer, and it turned into this runaway fluff and feels fest.  
> I regret nothing.

Shikadai peeks one eye open, trying to make out the shape of whoever has just entered his bedroom. It’s a dark night, there’s no moonlight to outline the figure creeping towards his bed. His shoulders tense. He blinks owlishly, trying to clear the glaze of sleep as he struggles to prop himself up on one forearm.

“Shikadai,” a voice rasps out, and he immediately relaxes at the sound. It’s soft and reassuring, though colored with a shaky timbre. Grumbling, the young boy settles back down onto his side, still squinting into the darkness. His protests are illegible rumblings, mind still weary from sleep. He’s only just started at the academy, and his senses aren’t fine tuned in the way that his parents’ are.

His old man always seemed to know where to find him when their new Ino-Shika-Cho training was supposed to start. His mother could always tell when he was trying to sneak out to avoid chores. Both of them knew he was lying without even having to look at him too hard. At first, Shikadai had suspected that this was some grand power parents were gifted with. Up until he’d started at the Academy, and realized that all of the teachers there had the same uncanny gifts. They always seeming to appear at just the right moment to catch he and Boruto in the act of causing trouble. His current teacher had laughingly explained that those acute senses were something that required time and practice to build up.

However, he’d known that voice his whole life. Had heard it every day since his birth. He didn’t need finely tuned ninja senses to know that it was his mother creeping into his room in the dead of night. Though perhaps having them would help his sleep addled brain to understand why.

He heard his mother chuckle softly as he flopped back down into his nest of pillows and blankets, trying to regain his previously comfortable position. Still, the sound of her muffled laughter offset his mind a bit more, prying him even further out of sleep. Temari’s hand emerges from the darkness and lands atop his head. He relaxes a bit under the touch as her fingers smooth along his loose dark hair. She takes a shuddering breath, and Shikadai squints hard into the darkness where he can now make out her form kneeling at the side of his futon. The shadows are too deep, still, for him to make out anything more than the curve of her cheek as she leans over him.

Her hand shifts from his hair down towards his face, and he scrunches up his nose in protest. Her fingers grope along the slope of his forehead and down along his temple. Shikadai grunts in protest as one of her thumbs grazes too close to his eye. His mother whispers something that might’ve been an apology, but comes out as little more than another shaky exhalation. Her thumb strokes along his cheek now, her other fingers cupping his jawline with just a bit too much pressure.

“Mom,” he groans, because there’s something unsettling about the way she’s holding his face. He rolls away from her, though it’s more to escape his discomfort than her surprise affection. Shikadai thinks to point out that she’s woken him up for seemingly no reason. He wants to complain that she’s being weird, and that he just wants to go back to sleep. He stays quiet, though, listening to the sound of her breathing. Or the lack thereof.

Her breath must’ve hitched at some point when he turned away, and it’s as if she’s stopped breathing altogether. Her hand settles on his shoulder, and she inhales and exhales sharply, as if relieved. Shikadai’s heart drops as her grip sends a jolt through his body. Something is wrong, and he has no idea what it is. His mother won’t tell him, outloud, and her actions only serve to confuse him. He can feel his own heartbeat where his ear meets the pillow, intermingling with the rustling of her clothes as she leans over him.

Her arms encircle him abruptly, and he stiffens as she settles down at his side to hug him. Her forehead settles against the crown of his head, and her nose is cold where it nuzzles into the base of his hair. Shikadai manages a weak noise of protest. The kind he usually makes when she babies him now, because he’s too old for motherly affection. Usually, it just feels too awkward now, too embarrassing to bear, and she always makes her hugs seem just a little bit patronizing. He doesn’t say so now, though, because this hug deviates so much from the norm.

Shikadai realizes, suddenly, that she’s been crying. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed before. The abnormal pattern to her breathing, the quivering of her cheek, the wetness of her fingertips as they brushed along his skin. He can feel those tears now, falling along his nape. Her shoulders shudder, ever so subtly, and his stomach turns over. Was that her choking back another sob, or was she just whispering more soundless words against the back of his head? Shikadai suddenly understands the expression “sick with worry”. Even still, he can’t muster up the right words.  
Instead he reaches up, cautiously, and catches ahold of one of the arms wrapped around his shoulders. As his fingers curl around her forearm, it’s her turn to tense up. His mother freezes in place as if shocked, and he gives her arms a squeeze that he hopes is reassuring.

He has never seen his mother cry before. Technically, he still can’t. Temari is not a woman who cries easily, or has much patience for tears. Any childhood injuries that weren’t severe enough for medical attention were always met with a firm “Walk it off, kiddo, you’ll be alright.” Tears were not an option. Least he hear her compare him with fondness and exasperation to his ‘Crybaby’ father. The warm laughter this roused from his father never made him feel any less like crying, but at least it earned him a pitying look from his old man. Shikamaru typically took a softer approach to his tears, but still encouraged him to put on a strong face “for his mother’s sake.” Because his mother wasn’t a crier. Yet here she was, hugging him like a lifeline and crying into his hair as if he were an oversized teddy bear.

He is relieved when her body relaxes again, and he pats her arm a bit more since his touch seems to be working. She sighs, rubbing her cheek on his hair now. Shikadai bites down on his annoyance at yet another bit of affection. The Nara’s aren’t a touchy feely family, the way Boruto’s family is. His mother’s physical affection is usually limited to salutations. Lately, she’s only ever hugged him because she’s figured out it rubs his blossoming male ego the wrong way.

Shikadai sighs too, trying to get comfortable since she hasn’t made any moves to release him yet. She chuckles again, because apparently him trying to get back to sleep is the only thing she can find amusing in this moment. He can’t bring himself to be irritated by this, either. Instead, he tries to puzzle out what it is that’s caused her to become… Like this.

“Mom,” he hazards, and she makes a small noise in the back of her throat to acknowledge him.  
“You okay?”

After a long pause, she sighs again, and Shikadai wonders if she’s only going to communicate in these small shaky breaths until he can figure out what’s wrong with her. Then she answers him, her voice raspy, “I’m okay, kiddo.”

He nods, considering.

“And your father is okay. And you’re okay. We’re okay,” She adds, speaking as if she’s slowly checking off items on a grocery list. She hugs him a little tighter for a second, and Shikadai feels as if he’s slowly figuring out his place in this uncharacteristic emotional moment. He wraps his arms around hers, hugging her back as best as he can. It’s awkward and doesn’t feel sincere, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

“It was just a dream, mom,” he tells her, and his voice shakes a bit because he’s unsure of what he’s saying. Shikadai can’t imagine the day when his strong and scary mother would be overwhelmed by a dream. Yet it’s the only thing he can think of that would send her stumbling into his bedroom in the dead of night just to hold onto him. There is a third laugh that shakes her now, but Shikdai knows she’s not laughing at him this time. Her laughter is bitter now, directed towards herself. As if Temari is in just as much a state of disbelief as he is. She sucks in a sharp jerky breath, and slowly uncurls her arms from about him.

Shikadai feels a pinch of guilt at how self-deprecating the moment feels. He’s no Yamanaka, but he can almost hear her telling herself to “walk it off” now. He hadn’t meant to make her feel like that. As if her concern was some kind of… Flaw. She sits up next to him, and he rolls onto his back to look up at her. His eyes have adjusted even a bit, and he can make out her eyes as she looks down at her lap. Her lips are twisted, her brows furrowed along the shadows cast by her bangs. She wrestles with herself for a moment, and he watches as best as he can in the darkness.

“Mom-” he tries, and her hand settling along his forehead again startles him to silence.

“My Shikadai,” she muses, and she’s petting his hair again. Her tone is suddenly so loving that he’s not sure he knows quite how to reciprocate the amount of love she’s expressed by just saying his name. He simply settles in, closing his eyes to focus on the brush of her cold fingertips along his scalp. Her hands aren’t shaking anymore, at least, and she seemed to have made peace with whatever thoughts had been troubling her. Whether it be a dream, as he’d guessed, or something else entirely.

Quiet contemplation was a state of his mother’s that he was much more familiar with. It meant, if nothing else, there would be peace between them. This eased the churning of his stomach, and felt the last vestiges of unease seep from his weary body. Everything was, as Temari had said, okay. The moment, with all of it’s discomforts and uncertainties, had passed. It didn’t seem to bother his mother that he’d been unable to cope with this unusual moment. Even as drowsiness set out to reclaim him, he blinked up at her. Her expression was smooth and serene, as if she’d never been crying in the first place. Shikadai could almost imagine he’d dreamed it. Ironically, Shikdai didn’t dream at all as he fell asleep under his mother’s careful watch.

_____

Shikamaru stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching his wife sitting over their son. His eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were, but they’re still trained well enough to make out the rueful smile on her face. He knows she’s smiling at their son that way because she’s mentally berating herself for this. For waking up he and Shikadai in the middle of the night the way she has. For needing to do it. Shikadai is asleep in a heartbeat, and Shikamaru envies his son for that easy sleep. Shikamaru used to sleep without cares or worries too. He used to even call it his hobby.

But he’s an adult now. His work, his family, and his village have instilled in him worries and fears he’d never considered back when he was an Academy student dreaming for a boring life. Not to mention the years spent on the battlefield since those tranquil cloud watching days. Not to mention the war, and the price he’d had to pay for the shinobi world to win it. So no, sleep didn’t come as easy for him as it had in the past, and now it was thankfully dreamless.

Temari hadn’t been so lucky. Though she claimed she could easily set aside the day’s concerns when it was time for them to go to bed, it seemed that it was the past that reached out to take hold of her when she closed her eyes. The first time she’d come awake crying out had been a shock to him. There were things in her past she had never fully shared with him, from her childhood with a monster trapped inside a tormented boy, to her harsh father, and her years of ruthlessly slaughtering her way through missions… All of which had been followed by a war that had lead them all to the brink of extinction at the hands of an otherworldy, god-like being. Well there was a medical term to fit her nightmares that she vehemently rejected.

Her deep seeded refusal to acknowledge and cope with her flaws made helping her nearly impossible. But in this case, it only made him feel more helpless than frustrated. So all he could do was hold her when she woke up crying out for ghosts and grasping frantically for reality. Calm her as she took wet shuddering gasps for air and dragged her mind out of whatever hellscape it had conjured for her.

Shikamaru hadn’t been able to hold onto her tonight though. His words fell on deaf ears as she struggled out of his grip, eyes so wide that he’d been able to make out the whites through the darkness. She’d said their son’s name with so much unabashed terror, that he himself had felt a sharp jolt of worry coarse through him. He let her go, then, stumbling through the pitch black to seek out their son and reassure herself that he was safe and well in his room.

His heart ached for the all the pain and sorrow she held inside herself. It ached to think that he could do nothing to stop it, to save her from this dark cloud shadowing her mind. It ached to watch her now, bent over their son, torturing herself for not being able to control her fears.

Seemingly content with her sleeping child, she turns her head up to look at him directly. He can’t make out the beautiful teal green of her eyes, but he can feel her stare. She doesn’t speak outright, but she knows what she wants to tell him.

Children climb into their parent’s beds when they have nightmares, not the other way around.

Shikamaru doesn’t need to see her face clearly to understand what she’s feeling. The guilt, the embarrassment, and the disdain that she feels for her perceived weakness. He’s expressed a hundred times over that parents never need to be forgiven for loving their children. Even if that love comes in a rush of concerned panic in the middle of the night. As always, she’s too stubborn to truly try to understand. So he goes the route that she often prefers, and shows her instead. With a yawn, he makes his way carefully into the room, stepping carefully over his son despite her softly hissed warning. Without a word of explanation, he lays down with what little room he can find on the opposite side of Shikadai’s futon. Ignoring Temari’s stare, he wriggles Shikadai’s pillow out far enough that he can rest his cheek down comfortable With a huff of contentment, he closes his eyes and settles in to sleep for the rest of the night. A moment passes in which Temari is given the opportunity to question him. She doesn’t, and Shikamaru falls easily into sleep curled up next to their son.

________

Shikadai Nara wakes up to a sound not wholly unlike sawing logs. With bleary eyes, he turns to his left to see his father’s ugly mug not but a few inches from his own. The culprit behind the loud snoring. Shikdai groans, and tries to roll away, but a heavy weight on his chest pins him in place. Turning his head, he’s slightly more surprised to find his mother sleeping on his other side. Temari has one arm curled around him, protectively, the other resting beneath her head as she sleeps with her head pressed against his shoulder. Turning his grimace to the ceiling, he questions the heavens as to what he’s done to warrant such a rude awakening. He doesn’t think to ask why it is his parents are asleep curled around him. He doesn’t resent their present, nor find the sentiment too overbearing. Instead, he laments his lack of sleep.

“What a drag…” He mutters to himself, drowned out by the sound of another nasally snore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
